For many who are an indie solo game developer or are trying to be one like myself. It does not take very long to realize where the gaps are in your skillset and when it becomes particle to spend some money when you can. We also don’t tend to have much of a budget so being tight with it tends to be the best course of action.

Other factors have to be taken into consideration. Depending on the type of game and scope of things maybe you have some kind of product out in 6 months if you are going the 2D route and have some idea what you are doing. Along with a not a very complex game as well.

Then you have other types of games where realistically speaking they could take 3, 5, or in many cases 10 years. The biggest issue is when a game takes 10 years instead of 3 that tends to come down to the total budget that a person was planning to allocate towards making a game having a massive issue. It’s not uncommon for the budget to run away with no signs of it getting back on track.

Before I dived into starting this journey I did some research. I noticed so many people out there run into not having enough money and having to put there project on the back burner. This usually happens when they increase their spending to solve things they just can’t do on their own. That tends to be how a three-year project turns into a ten-year one with no end in sight as they just get lost and forgotten about.

A lot of the times they try and commission unique pieces of say art assets for their game. They have this fear of looking like everything else on the market in the indie game space and they want to stand out. That can get quite pricey over the long run if you have hundreds to thousands of individual custom made pieces.

I, on the other hand, have an eye on a couple of bulk produced and sold asset packs that I would consider buying at some point when the time comes. My goal is not to be the most unique thing out there as my shoestring budget is not going to cover whatever kind of check that would need to be written. My skills for now are also lacking to do so.

One thing I have noticed when creating my game on Unreal Engine 4 vs others like Unity instead. Is some companies charge 20% or more of a difference in price depending on how popular that engine is. While you would think you could just go buy the cheaper version on the other platform. Those kinds of purchases usually come with a “for this platform use only.” Aka you are not licensed to use it on another platform.

From time to time some interesting deals on sites like Humble Bundle come around. Sometimes they can be a bit tricky to understand what strings come attached to them if anything. Other times you are just getting an insane deal and can use it on whatever platform for development you like or none at all.

More times than not I try and not look too deep into development deals going down on Humble Bundle. It’s easy to start spending thousands with all the stuff they seem to be having these days. This for many can become quite easy to fall into the trap of “it’s cheap and I might need it in the future.”

For two more weeks, Humble Bundle is having this insane deal of 7k Game Dev Icons for just $20 at the top tier. I heard they did different packs that might contain some of the same items last month as well I did not see it. So if you are someone who regularly buys these kinds of deals you might not be getting anything new or not much. So checking to see what is really in them is important.

In total there are around 40 or so individual packs in this massive package. When I started to look into them I’m willing to admit most were not that great. Store pages where they are being sold individually had like 2 reviews on a lot of these if that. The couple of icons they show in each one I would never have a use case for either. Buying something without a use case is something I’m trying to avoid to keep my budget on track even when it’s only a couple of bucks here or there.

There was one thing that I was a bit concerned with as well. When I was looking at the packs they all linked back to the Unity store. This to me quickly indicated there might be something I don’t know about this amazing deal and need to dig even deeper.

As someone who is creating a game on Unreal Engine 4, I’m used to having all the assets I have acquired in a special place on their platform called my “vault.” I’m not usually too worried about licensing issues right out of the gate for using things I acquire there. I do still tend to look into stuff.

Thankfully with a little digging on social medial, I found others having questions regarding the legal use of these asset packs as they are being sold as well. This resulted in checking the EULA as well. While some of it seems to contradict itself which others noted seem to share the same impression when reading it. There is no mention of a game engine limitation or anything else that alarming. It’s a quite short agreement.

After a little more digging around I found out you directly download all these packages from Humblebundle themselves as well! I can confirm to be the case after buying it myself. This is great as I don’t have to worry about needing to activate them on another platform just to download what might come with other terms and conditions of use for doing so. This is a sneaky thing that happens when you find that amazing deal sometimes so you got keep an eye out. Not this time around which is great.

There were a couple of packs in this list I was going to buy any way at some point on there own anyways. I didn’t buy them yet since I did not need them and it can pay to wait for that deal. So when this deal came up I could not resist at only $20 for it and an insane amount of extra stuff. Which saves me a few bucks, money goes to charity, and I have 1.5 gigs of 7k icons-- WTF! Some of them are double formatted so it is a bit less if I only saved the PNG versions.

When a lot of these deals come up people buy them sometimes just because. Many fall under the spend $1 on every game development offer and pick through what you need afterward. Which I’ll admit is tempting to do and I have not been. Since I don’t like to just horde things to horde them like many in the industry do.

The biggest downside here is these things are going to be mass sold and even used. They also don’t include everything I need to use them in a particle since. As such, I’ll be making some edits and adding in a little bit of customization when needed to fit my needs. This is how someone on a shoestring budget should approach great deals in my opinion.

For starters since many of these icons can be used for skills. I have in my game an indication of cooldown when an ability or spell is pressed by having icons go a darker grey. This is done by having two images with one set as a background on a percentage shown. I just pop open a program like SketchBook and color the second image of them in with a marker to add a layer of darkness overlay to them. It gives me better control as well than trying to do that way as i can see the result upfront.

There are also some icons I’m going to be making some modifications to as well or at least attempting. Some things I’m going to attempt to add damage, weathering, cracks, darkened areas and so forth on some icons. While others not so much and I’ll be leaving them as is. This will help make some of these things stand out and be different than what others may be doing to use them. That will be a project for another day.

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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from Unreal Engine 4.

Game Development | Shoestring Budget And Getting A Great Deal

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